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Originally Posted by willravel
You can start by asking that same question to the Generals and Admirals that have voiced their concerns about our current and possible future plans in Iraq. As was pointed out earlier, without a draft we won't have the manpower to control Iraq. We'd need somewhere in the neighborhood of 800,000 troops. That's not going to happen becuase 1) enlistment is down and 2) the draft would die on the floor of the Senate. The "guys on the ground" serving their third tour in a row probably would rather go home than stay in a country that doesn't want us there fighting a war we started. We can't help there, so we have to start making sure that they're able to help themselves. Our exodus is taking waaay too long (we should have been out by mid 2005 according to many militarty analysts), and things are going from bad to worse. A few thousand more troops are not going to turn the tide. It's a waste of lives.
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First, the 800,000 number was created out of thin air. Compairing Iraq to post WWII Germany just doesn't work because of the losses of manpower and level of destruction visited on the German people during 7 years of war. The main problem with most of the Iraqi infrastructure and production facilities is that most of it simply hasn't been maintained. Of course bombings are causing some damage, but the majority of the problem comes from the fact that the previous regime didn't or couldn't maintain the electrical grid, roads, etc. properly.
Second, the generals on the ground are not asking for 800,000 troops. They're asking for 30,000. They're getting it. Will, I'm only singling you out for convenience, but what experience do you have in strategic and tactical deployment of soldiers in an urban combat situation? Let's remember that these are career officers that not only have trained for this for their entire adult lives (generally speaking
), but they've also been on the ground for the better part of 3 years. Unless you can give me military reasons why this is a bad idea, I think that all the political rhetoric is just a bunch of gum flapping.
At this point, you either accept that the experts know what they're doing or not. I will certainly grant you that it's entirely possible that they don't know what they're doing (as per my last post), but I'm not quite ready to accept that yet. General Westmoreland certainly had no earthly idea how to win in Vietnam, and I think that Abizaid probably has similar issues. We'll see who the new boss is and what ideas they're going to bring to the table.
I agree that a draft is pretty much impossible right now without some sort of appeal directly to the American people by the military, which just isn't going to happen. In my opinion, which is obviously one of someone who's never been there, the real influx of American manpower needs to be civilian. We need folks from the Department of Agriculture, HUD, Education, etc. there to rebuild and educate. Soldiers are not trained to win hearts and minds, they're trained to shoot them. This is a war prosecuted solely by the Department of Defense at this point - it's time for the rest of the government to do their parts.